Stories from our Back Roads are two books just released by Bateman Books, one covers the North Island, the other the South. Here NZ4WD mag publisher Cathy Parker profiles their author, former contributor, Ray Stone, and we re-run one of his stories which was originally published in New Zealand 4WD and Sport Vehicle magazine in 2002.
The books are written by an iconic figure in the New Zealand automotive world, Ray Stone – for more details see the sidebar story.
The short take is that Ray was in a previous life the General Manager of the famous Masport Escort Rally team.
Later in life, however, Ray found pleasure in back road and off-road touring in his trusty Hilux; in fact he was a long time contributor to NZ4WD and a good friend of the magazine. We have included one of Ray’s earlier 4WD track articles after this story, this was published in NZ4WD in 2002 under the title of “One Mistake to another” and covers a trip up the Godley Valley including a visit to Mistake Hill.
Ray introduces the books saying ,“This book is for people who enjoy driving and exploring the stories of our back roads, but most of all it is for people who love New Zealand. I hope you enjoy it – whether that’s from your SUV or from a fireside chair.”
Ray has driven each of the roads and provides not only the story behind them, but also a vivid description of each route, as well as notes of things to look out for along the way, advice for drivers, and maps.
NZ’s early history
He says, “This country’s early history has always stirred my imagination, particularly the wealth of European pioneering routes and tracks that opened up the ’interior’ and added significantly to the economic growth of a fledgling nation. That many of those early routes were based on Maori foot trails only adds to their value, their importance and their mystique.” We have published a brief excerpt from one story in the Old Motu Road Sidebar.
These two books draw on his travels over the years covering some iconic and interesting New Zealand back roads. Whilst this is not about off-road tracks, Ray does suggest that a good 4WD or AWD RV, SUV or ute would be ideal.
Suitable vehicles
He has further outlined three typical groups of vehicles in terms of ruggedness with suggested vehicle types for each group.
• Group A would be vehicles such as a Toyota RAV4 or Subaru Forester.
• Group B examples would be a Toyota Prado or Nissan Pathfinder.
• Group C examples a Land Rover Discovery or Nissan Patrol.
For each route he gives a suitability for each vehicle group with a:
• tick (suitable).
• ? Perhaps suitable but only in ideal conditions
• ! may be required if conditions are extreme.
• X Unsuitable.
He does likewise for three tyre types HT, AT and MT, so for instance The Old Motu Road gets an X for group A and a tick for Group B, a ? for HT tyres and a tick for AT tyres.
North ‘n South
The North Island book contains 38 roads including some well-known ones such as the Old Motu Road, Red Rocks, Gum Diggers Road and the Mohaka Coach Road. The South Island book has a further 29 tracks including Big River, The Rainbow Road, Old Dunstan Road , Macetown and Skippers Canyon.
Buy your favourite four-wheeler or explorer one or both of these for Christmas and they could do one road trip a week for over a year and expect any long distance trips to take the way less travelled rather than the main highway – the bonus being you will get to see some different and amazing parts of New Zealand along the way.
